Flashback: January, 2007. Dan Silver learns via the magical power of the internet that Tricia Helfer, the tall blonde from Battlestar, is going to be in the February issue of Playboy. A few weeks later, Tonya (if you don't know who she is now, feel free to browse this section) is doing God-knows-what about town and I call her and tell her to pick up said Playboy. I try to act only slightly excited, so as to ensure that she'll repeat such an errand in the future.
Tonya arrives and I act casual and disinterested for a few minutes before I finally tear open the plastic that covers the magazine -- I mean, we wouldn't want our children to read an interview with that fag from American Idol! -- and take a glimpse inside. In the supposedly "dirty" book, what do I find? Why, it's a bunch of ads, blonde jokes, stupid letters to the editor and cardboard subscription cards. But, hey, that's not all: there are also boring essays, articles and interviews that nobody would ever read. And, if you're lucky, you might also see a grand total of six photographs of some chick's rack in black and white while some object cleverly, innocently obscures her vajay from any (GASP!) view.
Rad.
Look, I accept the fact that I'm a pervert and that I like porn; I'm not ashamed of it. And, as I'm smart enough to maintain a website and write an article that's somewhat articulate, I understand that I have nobody to blame but myself for the fact that "tasteful erotic nudes" have pretty much no chance of making my dick hard; it's grown callous-- er, jaded over the years. That, and I'm not fourteen anymore. In order for the dark power to entrance my loins, in the absence of another enthusiastic participant, I need to see some anatomy interacting with other, different sexed anatomy - or said other sexed anatomy's byproduct (not kids, folks, earlier in the chain) all over the feminine participant's upper body (so, I'm a little kinky; so what?). But I'm okay with that. There's no absence of such material on the interweb. I just take issue with the fact that Playboy is a boring magazine that advertises itself by suggesting that it's sexual and erotic, plus the reader can get a little stereo advice should he or she desire. Yet the major selling point is supposed to be the eroticism, which makes up about -- hold on, lemme get a calculator -- 160 total pages with thirty-two pages containing images (including cartoons) that one couldn't show on network TV. This means that twenty percent of Playboy has anything to do with its major selling point: pictures of naked women. The evidence of this: every cover of a Playboy magazine, ever, has featured a semi-nude woman.
I just don't get how this happens. Would you see a movie that was twenty percent story and the remaining eighty percent previews and famous people talking about themselves? No, you wouldn't.
And, furthermore, Hugh Hefner's taste in women is boring: fake blondes with big, fake boobs, fake white teeth, fake tan, and a generous side of Photoshop and makeup.
And, as long as we're talking about this, I further believe that pictures, such as those in your average Playboy, are about seven million times more sexist and more harmful to the next generation of girls than your average hardcore, "gonzo" porn. The reason being: reality. Most low-budget porn gets one take, is shot in somebody's house or shitty hotel room and utilizes minimal makeup and lighting. Whereas magazines like Playboy employ professional photographers, who take hundreds of pictures only to use a few, "perfect" shots. In hardcore, the men are just dicks and the women are just holes. There are no suggestions that by being nude in a magazine that shares paper with a Charles Grodin interview, one is somehow elevating the cause of womankind; it's just sex, explicit and sometimes ugly and maybe even a little distasteful (especially if you're browsing my DVD collection), but real, sex.
Perhaps I will go to hell because I like watching people screw on my TV, computer and/or in print. Perhaps, because I'm an American and a resident of the "Great Satan" I'm going to roast for all eternity being stabbed with jagged spears by puritanical fanatics who think that women should be covered at all times and that the clitoris is an organ of evil: but at least I got my rocks off pretty much every day until my demise from the age of thirteen. And I never, and will not ever, strap a bomb to my body and take out a bus full of commuters.
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